Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, including the use of cognitive interview

The cognitive interview was created by Ronald Fisher and Edward Geiselman (1992) to improve the techniques used by police in interview processes. There are four stages:

Report Everything: witnesses are encouraged to include every single detail of the event, even things seeming ensignificant as they could act as triggers for more important memories

Reinstate the Context: the witness should return to the original crime scene in their mind and try to remember as many details as possible about the environment (redice the effects of context-dependent forgetting)

Reverse the Order: recall events in a different chronological order to the original statement (ie in reverse) to prevent people from reporting their expectation of how the event is supposed to occur…